That began, probably, with the decimation of Geocities in 2009, before stretching towards Gawker and the Toast, while grazing Grantland, killing the Awl, and then, just last week, Rookie. Over the past 10 years, esoteric, rambling, personality-driven pockets of the internet - or, really, any web platforms and editorial outlets that don’t have the approval and funding of vast corporate powers - have been drowning at a steady clip. And that this anecdote is now itself something of a punchline is entirely indicative of the speed of the internet’s dispensation of the other. It’s hard to think of other sites where finding all of that would be possible. But I only half-believed him, so he gave me some links, and I took those links from the diner to my apartment and, in this way, multiple realities converged: an interest in the arts and sexuality, and a way of living that worked for me. Tumblr was, he said, an accumulation of things: fandoms, art, porn.
We met once, and then once again, and the third time he told me about the site over waffles. I found out about Tumblr from a guy I met through Craigslist, around 2011.
